Ashanti selling herself on Ebay? Seriously?

[D_Fluoridia Bidet]

eBay: Ashanti, Ghana, Africa Terra cotta funerary figure (item 270096315585 end time Mar-11-07 21:46:38 PDT)

This item is Ashanti. Are we talking Ashanti the singer's face all plastered into wood or rock? No are we talking about a beat piece of thing from a foreign country enough to bring chaos and disease if it's been touched by Ashanti the singer of Murder Inc records? Or is this her face when she wakes up in the morning? Or this the devil? OR is this item serious on Ebay?

forgot to add something to this post so edit this
I got this in an email has anyone gotten this email? Seriously my friend and my aunt got the same email. I think it's spam going around so be warned. Im like what the hell is this?

 

[playainda336]

Seriously?

There's just a tribe in Africa that is called the "Ashanti tribe" and this is their art.

Terra cotta funerary figure from the Ashanti people of Ghana. Head is tilted back so when sitting on the grave site this figure looks up.

 

[D_Fluoridia Bidet]

its for graves? what the hell that means someone committed suicide or something

 

[SpoiledPrincess]

It doesn't mean someone's committed suicide, it means someone's been robbing graves, a time honoured tradition in many places.

 

[D_Fluoridia Bidet]

It doesn't mean someone's committed suicide, it means someone's been robbing graves, a time honoured tradition in many places.

seriously? people rob graves for a tradition? I know not in America maybe Africa or somewhere....

sorry just getting educated here lol

 

[SpoiledPrincess]

I was joking but there is a long tradition of robbing tombs/graves to steal funerary goods. Many Egyptian tombs have evidence of being robbed soon after internment and early archeologists were really little better than thieves, their intention mainly to find artefacts not to further knowledge in any way. Many mummies, sarcophogi, anthropomorphic coffins and other grave goods were sold to private individuals The statue on Ebay is, however, most likely a replica.

 

[B_big dirigible]

seriously? people rob graves for a tradition? I know not in America maybe Africa or somewhere....

In the "Americas", definitely. There's a huge market for Mesoamerican artifacts, and one a bit less overheated but certainly not negligible for artifacts from north of the Rio Grande. It does no good to post guards at the sites in Mexico or Guatemala, as the looters just shoot them, chop up the Mayan stellae with chain saws, and ship them out into the international market. Monuments, grave goods, anything portable - off it goes. Much of it does end up in the USA, as many Americans are prodigious collectors.

The eBay item could be authentic and need not have been looted. It doesn't say that it's old. The Ashanti suffered severly at the hands of British adventurers during the Ashanti War of 1895, but they're still there, and they could use foreign currency as much as anyone. So they make artifacts for, among other things, the tourist trade.

Much like Hopi kachinas, these newly-manufactured items aren't fakes if they're made by bona-fide Ashanti (or Hopis). But if they're injection-molded in Taiwan, that's another matter.